Ever wondered how convenient it would be if your local grocer would also be able to help you pay your bills, book airline tickets and make hotel bookings? For all you know, he may already be providing these facilities.
A brainchild of Paresh Rajde, Founder, MD & CEO, Suvidhaa Infoserve Pvt Ltd, was started in 2007. Suvidhaa has 22,000 outlets in 500 cities and towns and has plans of taking it to 100,000 outlets in the next two years, maintaining a balance between metro and rural areas. The platform sees about 150,000 daily transactions.
Single-point cash
Having faced a problem in getting an airline ticket on a Sunday, Rajde had to make an airport journey just to do so. The experience, coupled with the fact that 91 per cent of India's economy is cash-based and only five per cent are comfortable with online transactions, prompted Rajde to create a platform where a bouquet of services would be available to consumers at a single point.
"I wanted to provide all possible services under a single platform, so whether it is booking travel tickets, mobile recharges or your insurance premium, everything should be payable at a single point of contact," he said.
Apart from the convenience factor of paying in cash, there's no cash benefit for consumers.
In Manish Nagar of Mumbai's Andheri, Rajesh and Hitesh Pasad's Meena stores has been a Suvidhaa outlet for the past two years. "We decided to become an outlet because our business was affected due to the opening of malls and stores such as Reliance Fresh and More. My total investment in this venture has been around Rs 60,000," said Pasad.
Retailers are required to deposit Rs 10,000 as a non-refundable, upfront fee and have to invest in a computer, internet connection and a printer. Distributors are required to have a working capital of around Rs 3 lakh. Suvidhaa is also expected to come up with an online portal in the second quarter of 2010.
Local stores
"We want to mainly tie up with local convenience stores to tap the trust factor, because even now people prefer to have transactions face to face. We look for franchisees with basic computer literacy and after the platform is set up at their store, provide a one-hour training to help them get used to the platform," said Rajde.
While Pasad of Meena stores says one cannot depend only on Suvidhaa, it is a good means of supplementing their income. "Most of the customers come for booking their rail tickets, and I see about 30-40 of them in a month. I make about Rs 5,000 on an average in a month only through Suvidhaa," he said.
Retailers see margins of Rs 100-500 on air tickets and Rs 40-50 on bus tickets. Services such as electricity bill payments give lower margins.
Rajde said, "We give our retailers the maximum of the margin at 70 per cent, the distributor is given 10 per cent and 20 per cent goes to Suvidhaa."
Around 30 per cent of the 150,000 transactions on the Suvidhaa platform are telecom related, while travel related ones are 25 per cent, 20 per cent are utilities related and the rest from the other services the platform provides such as entertainment and healthcare services.
So, the next time you want to buy tickets or pay your premium, while shopping for groceries, you know where to go.
